Rezanov was uneasy on more scores than one.
He was annoyed and mortified at the discovery--
made over the punch bowl--that the girl he had
taken to be twenty was but sixteen. It was by no
means his first experience of the quick maturity of
southern women--but sixteen! He had never
wasted a moment on a chit before, and although he
was a man of imagination, and notwithstanding
her intelligence and dignity, he could not reconcile
properties so conflicting with any sort of feminine
ideal.

And the pressing half of his mission he had con-
fided to her! No man knew better than he the
value of a tactful and witty woman in the political
dilemmas of life; more than one had given him
devoted service, nor ever yet had he made a mistake.
After several hours spent in the society of this clever,
politic, dissatisfied girl he had come to the conclu-
sion that he could trust her, and had told her of the
lamentable condition of the creatures in the employ
of the Russian-American Company; of their chronic
state of semi-starvation, of the scurvy that made
them apathetic of brain and body, and eventually
would exterminate them unless he could establish
reciprocal trade relations with California and obtain
regular supplies of farinaceous food; acknowl-
edged that he had brought a cargo of Russian and
Boston goods necessary to the well-being of the Mis-